20 Most Memorable Movie Villains of 2013

20. Olga Kurkulina as Mother Russia in Kick-Ass 2. She's a former KGB killer, a giantess whose one-on-one with Hit-Girl does not disappoint.
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19. Matthew Goode as Charlie Stoker in Stoker. He's saddled with the most obviously whacked character, yet he wields his pretty-boy features and prim-and-proper accent to chilling effect, at least until revelations about his true nature drag Charlie into even more silly territory.
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(Pictured: Bruce Willis and John Moore in A Good Day to Die Hard)
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16. Sean Penn as Mickey Cohen in Gangster Squad. As Gangster Squad opens, boss Mickey Cohen is well on his way to establishing an empire of vice, is the snake in the West Coast Eden of prosperous Los Angeles circa 1949.
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14. Jim Carrey as Steve Gray in The Incredible Burt Wonderstone. He turns up as a controlled grotesque, a self-abusing 'magician' whose act is all about violations of his own body. Done up like a goonish Brad Pitt, or regular Chris Hemsworth as Thor, Carrey applies his cartoon expressiveness to its most judicious ends in years.
7/20

13. Steve Carell as Trent in The Way Way Back. As Trent, Carell plays an incredibly dickish new boyfriend to the mother of Duncan, a fourteen-year-old everyteen.
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12. Donald Sutherland as President Snow in The Hunger Games: Catching Fire. He's a naughty big-daddy silver fox if ever there was one, who recognizes Katniss's (Jennifer Lawrence) rebellious streak and celeb status that threatens his omnipotence.
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11. Will Forte as Chester V in Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2. Forte's voice becomes Chester V, a powerful inventor who promises a solution the citizens cannot resist.
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10. Edward James Olmos as Papi Greco in 2 Guns, as a Mexican drug kingpin.
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7. Peter Stormare as Burrell in The Last Stand. As Burrell, Stormare's a henchman for international drug lord Gabriel Cortez, played by Eduardo Noriega.
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6. Stacy Keach as Ed Pegram in Nebraska. He plays the septuagenarian we loved to hate. Never thought you'd root for a geezer to get punched in the face? Keach's loathsome, but all-too-believable jerk will change your mind. And he does a great karaoke version of Elvis's "In the Ghetto."
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5. Mel Gibson as Luther Voz in Machete Kills. He plays a precognitive scientist cult leader. It's just that, if you're a character in a Machete movie, your lifespan is about as long as it takes to eat a taco.
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4. Antje Traue as Faora-Ul in Man of Steel. She plays General Zod's commander of the Kryptonian military.
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3. Michael Fassbender as Edwin Epps in 12 Years a Slave. In one scene, Fassbender's creepy plantation owner forces Chiwitel Ejiofor's Solomon to whip a female slave who has sneaked away to a neighboring plantation for a bar of soap.
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2. Danny McBride in This is the End. First McBride eats most of the food in the house, then he leaves the house, then at the end of the film, things become really bizarre.
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1. Ben Kingsley as The Mandarin in Iron Man 3. He's a pointy-bearded sage who's half Osama bin Laden, half Ming the Merciless. Played with bug-eyed hamminess by Ben Kingsley, and the movie is spooky, silly, or both whenever he's onscreen.
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2013 was a good year to be bad. This year's best villains weren't just goons with guns -- although there were a few great examples of those. (Here's looking at you, Sean Penn.) We also hissed at slave-owners, inventors, seducers, producers, and a couple amazing women who left an impression without barely speaking a word -- plus another mom who couldn't stop talking and never said anything nice. With less than a month left in 2013, Voice film critics present these twenty memorably nasty characters who made us want to throw popcorn at the screen. --Amy Nicholson.